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00:04March, in the year 1900, the eastern Mediterranean.
00:14A Greek diver working off the island of Antikythera
00:18discovers the wreck of a Roman treasure ship on the seafloor.
00:23It had sunk sometime around 80 BC and was laden with precious works of art.
00:30Amongst the priceless objects, however, was one item
00:32that the treasure hunters hardly gave a second glance.
00:36I mean, who would be interested in a bit of old junk like this?
00:42Oh, thanks.
00:43But this unprepossessing lump of corroded metal
00:47turned out to be the most extraordinary find of all
00:50and one which would totally change our view of the ancient world.
00:59From this little lump of crud emerged an ancient machine of some kind.
01:04A machine that couldn't possibly have existed over 2,000 years ago.
01:09For centuries, we've been told the Romans
01:12were the invented geniuses of the ancient world.
01:15But this mechanism has turned that idea on its head.
01:20This would confirm that it wasn't the Romans
01:23who were the brains of the ancient world,
01:25but the barbarians.
01:48We've only recently begun to realize
01:50that the ancient world was more advanced than we thought.
01:56Our whole picture of the time comes from Rome.
02:00This was the civilization that built baths and aqueducts
02:03and whose achievements have been admired and copied ever since.
02:08But could the golden glow of Rome have blinded us
02:12to the fact that there were other more advanced civilizations around?
02:16Perhaps it's time to turn away from Rome
02:18to the world the Romans regarded as barbarian,
02:22which included, rather surprisingly, the Greeks.
02:27Originally, it was the Greeks who called the Romans barbarians,
02:31so the Romans were really only returning the compliment.
02:34But it didn't mean they saw the Greeks as uncivilized.
02:37They saw them as decadent, overeducated, effete.
02:42In other words, unmanly,
02:44and therefore decidedly un-Roman.
02:51It's not that the Romans weren't intellectuals.
02:54It's just that their range of interests was limited
02:57to things like world domination.
03:01And that meant they missed a lot of ideas
03:03that could have been very useful to them.
03:05And there were plenty of bright ideas around,
03:08right on their doorstep.
03:10Here, for example.
03:14This is Syracuse, in modern Sicily.
03:18Today, of course, it's part of Italy.
03:19But 2,000 years ago, Syracuse was a Greek city.
03:30Syracuse rivalled Athens as the most beautiful city
03:33in the Greek world.
03:36The Greek philosopher Plato visited the island
03:38and wanted to set up his utopia here.
03:44It's a nice place.
03:45In fact, it's the kind of place everyone wanted to come to.
03:49To take over.
03:50Defending it was an ongoing headache.
03:55Which is why, back around 400 BC,
03:58the Greeks here in Syracuse
04:00invented the very first mechanical artillery.
04:05Syracuse had centuries of military engineering under its belt
04:08by the time Rome came on the scene.
04:13In the 3rd century BC,
04:15the rising Republic of Rome was locked in conflict
04:18with its great rival, Carthage.
04:21And the Greek city of Syracuse
04:23was caught slap-bang in the middle.
04:28At first, Syracuse wisely supported Rome,
04:32but in 214 BC, Syracuse switched its allegiance.
04:38Big mistake.
04:42The Romans sent a general by the name of Marcellus
04:45to deal with their little Greek problem.
04:52Marcellus took the neighbouring city of Leontini
04:55and had some 2,000 of its citizens beheaded.
04:59Now, Rome threw everything it had against Syracuse.
05:08But Syracuse had a secret weapon.
05:14A local boy by the name of Archimedes.
05:17Famous in the town today, of course, for his pizzas.
05:20But in his time, he was a phenomenon.
05:29Archimedes had not studied in the intellectual backwater in Rome,
05:33but in Egypt.
05:34At the Great Library of Alexandria,
05:36he was exposed to a storehouse of knowledge
05:39from across the ancient world.
05:42But it's a surprisingly little-known fact
05:45that Archimedes was one of the world's great lovers.
05:49He was passionate, ardent, head over heels in love.
05:52With maths.
05:54He just loved figures, calculations, geometry,
05:57and all that stuff that makes the rest of us
05:59want to go and have a curry and a cold beer.
06:08Even an expert on Archimedes,
06:10like Chris Rorys.
06:14Archimedes was one of those rare geniuses
06:16who lifted us out of the era of superstition.
06:20It was he who showed that the universe is controllable,
06:24predictable, explainable.
06:27That is, we don't have to pray to the gods for the sun to rise tomorrow.
06:30The sun will rise because of the laws of nature.
06:34And this was revolutionary.
06:36This is kind of like applying mathematics to everyday things.
06:40Yes, to all possible physical phenomena.
06:43How the stars rotate, how drinks behave, how things float in fluid.
06:48For example, he is responsible for the law of buoyancy.
06:53How, for example, if something floats in a fluid...
07:24You just put that in your beer!
07:26...and the distances of the lever.
07:27One of his famous sayings is,
07:29Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.
07:32Meaning that with a long enough lever,
07:34you can lift as big a weight as you want.
07:37Okay, so now what about his screwing technique?
07:39Well, his screwing technique, I just happen to have an Archimedes screw with me.
07:43And let me demonstrate by stealing a little bit of your beer.
07:45If you will sacrifice a couple of liters of beer.
07:50Well, it's for the sake of science.
07:52And a glass of beer, I think, would be a good demonstration.
07:55Oh, dear.
07:55And you can see almost magically the fluid flowing uphill as I turn the screw clockwise.
08:02It's a long way to steal Helen's beer, honestly.
08:06There are huge screws of this design.
08:09In use today.
08:10And this is one of the oldest machines in continual use for two and a half millennia.
08:16Archimedes was devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and he was a brilliant engineer.
08:21The Romans themselves admitted that they didn't have anybody like him.
08:26Many centuries later, Archimedes' work became the basis on which the likes of Galileo and Newton would build.
08:36But Archimedes was no ivory tower theorist.
08:39He was already working for the king of Syracuse as his military advisor when the Romans decided to attack the
08:45city.
08:45And he was busy turning his scientific speculations into something more concrete.
08:51Preferably so concrete they could be chucked at the enemy.
09:00This is the Castello Iurealo, ancient Syracuse's main line of defence.
09:08It was already a pretty formidable structure that Archimedes set about making it even better.
09:19As the Roman fleet approached, Archimedes brought into play a carefully planned system,
09:25which meant the defenders had everything they needed where and when they needed it.
09:32It's said he constructed these underground galleries so the defenders could get in position without exposing themselves to the enemy.
09:43Archimedes is also credited with inventing the loophole, a narrow slit in the wall
09:48that was wider on the inside so archers could fire in comparative safety.
09:53And along the waterfront, he'd prepared a formidable battery of surprises for the Roman fleet.
09:59Nasty surprises.
10:02Whatever strategy the Romans had to attack the city, Archimedes had a counter-strategy.
10:08For example, the Romans thought they would be facing a single catapult with a fixed range.
10:14And once they were inside of that range, they were safe to proceed to the city walls.
10:18But Archimedes had designed variable range catapults.
10:22So no matter where the Roman fleet was, there was a barrage of artillery there facing it.
10:29And then once they came to the walls of Syracuse, he had a whole series of machines
10:35inside the walls, literally inside the walls.
10:37You had these mounted crossbows that the Greeks called scorpions.
10:42And it was as if the entire wall was alive, as if it was a porcupine shedding its needles into
10:48the Roman fleet.
10:52The Romans were stunned at their first assault, but they hadn't seen anything yet.
11:02Archimedes' greatest surprise weapon was a giant mechanical claw that would harness all his theoretical work on levers, mass,
11:09and the phenomenon of buoyancy to devastating effect.
11:15So now, Chris, this multi-million dollar recreation of the siege of Syracuse.
11:19You're Archimedes, and who am I?
11:21You are Marcellus, the commander of the Roman fleet.
11:24OK.
11:25And what I have here is a scale model of the so-called Archimedes' claw.
11:29Interestingly enough, here we have the law of the Lieber in operation, with a grappling hook at one end and
11:35a counterweight on the other.
11:37Oh, here's Marcellus, and I'm coming in with my quinquereme.
11:40When a ship comes within range, I basically go fishing for Roman ships.
11:45OK.
11:45I can grab a hold of some piece of the ship, and it's very unstable.
11:50Already, most of these soldiers would have fallen off.
11:52Right, and plus the rear of the ship is now waterlogged, and the ship would slowly sink.
11:57This was the machine that frightened the Romans.
12:00And the Romans had never seen anything like this?
12:02Thereafter, any time they saw anything hanging from the walls of Syracuse, they said,
12:08beware, beware, one of Archimedes' machines is out to snag us.
12:14After a series of disastrous attacks, Marcellus and his fleet settled into a long siege of the city.
12:27The Romans became totally demoralized, and the Syracusans got so cocky, they started peering over the battles and jeering at
12:35their attackers.
12:36According to one historian, if only one old man out of all the Syracusans could have been removed.
12:43But so long as Archimedes was present, the Romans did not dare even to attempt an attack.
12:50The Roman soldiers were so rattled by Archimedes' inventions that they became convinced he had superhuman powers,
12:58that he must be some sort of sorcerer or bogeyman.
13:02Even to this day, the Romans' descendants here threaten their children with,
13:07look out or Archimedes will come and get you.
13:13However, Archimedes' magic seems to have made the Syracusans a bit too cocky.
13:20Eight months after the siege began, they were busy celebrating a festival which involved a lot of drinking.
13:29But the walls were left unmanned, and the Romans were able to get in and rampage through the city.
13:46When the Romans finally broke into the city, it's said that their general, Marcellus,
13:51was so struck by the beauty of the place that he wept at the thought of its fate in store.
13:57But after such a long siege, his soldiers had to have their day of fun, so he trashed the place.
14:11Not that Archimedes noticed, of course.
14:13He was so deep in his work that when a Roman soldier ordered him to move on,
14:18the old man refused to budge until he'd finished his calculations.
14:23Whereupon the soldier ran him through.
14:28Yet another triumph for Roman civilization.
14:41Marcellus understood they'd done something rather terrible.
14:45But the real tragedy was that the Romans themselves had no real interest in airy-fairy stuff like
14:52theoretical mathematics.
14:54And whatever it was that Archimedes was working on when he was killed disappeared forever.
15:10In fact, the murder of Archimedes could stand as an epitaph for the Roman destruction
15:16of the barbarian world of learning and ideas.
15:19Except that it was only the beginning.
15:26Rome had nothing less than world domination on its mind.
15:31By the first century BC, it controlled the whole Mediterranean.
15:36And Julius Caesar was busy looting Gaul and becoming a hero.
15:41Now Caesar's financial backer, a crooked property developer named Marcus Crassus,
15:47decided it all looked so easy he'd get in on the act.
15:54So Crassus announced it was his patriotic duty to conquer the barbarians of the East and seize their treasure.
16:09The Romans dismissed the barbarians of Europe, the Pelts, the Goths and the Germans, as primitive and uncivilised.
16:16But when they set out to destroy the barbarians to the East,
16:20they found they'd bitten off more than they could chew.
16:24This is where the Roman Empire met its match.
16:36The Persians themselves call it Iran.
16:50In the first century BC, Persia was at the centre of civilisation that was already 6,000 years old.
16:58The Persian Empire was ruled by a dynasty known as the Parthians,
17:02and it stretched from Asia Minor or Turkey in the West to the borders of India in the East.
17:19Within this empire were to be found the world's oldest civilisations,
17:25Mesopotamia and the fabled city of Babylon, home of mathematics and astronomy.
17:33It was a thriving world of abundance, luxury and good manners.
17:45It was a civilisation that was so different to Rome that the Romans simply didn't understand it.
17:51But then there was a lot of things the Romans didn't understand,
17:54which was precisely how they got their comeuppance in the Middle East.
18:03In 55 BC, in clear breach of a peace treaty between Rome and Persia,
18:09Crassus marched seven legions into Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey.
18:15After a year of demanding money with menaces from the towns in his path,
18:20Crassus crossed the river Euphrates into Mesopotamia
18:24and prepared to do battle with the Parthians close to the town of Haran.
18:31He'd no idea what he was letting himself into.
18:38Crassus may have thought the Parthians would be a pushover.
18:42After all, the Parthian king wrote Greek poetry and their greatest general wore make-up into battle.
18:51The Parthian commander was a Persian prince by the name of Surina.
18:56Surina may have worn make-up for his battle dates, but he was no pansy and he was certainly no
19:03mug.
19:09In the afternoon of 20th June, the advance guards of the two armies came face to face across the desert.
19:22The two mighty empires of the ancient world prepared to do battle.
19:40When the Persian army came into view, Crassus must have been feeling pretty cocky.
19:46After all, he had 40,000 men and as far as he could see, the Parthians had only about a
19:50quarter of that number.
19:52What he didn't know was that most of them were lying hidden in weight room.
20:00The full Parthian force now showed itself.
20:12The desert sun reflected of the metal of thousands of armoured warriors, each mounted on an armoured horse.
20:22The Romans were looking in horror at the future.
20:26A sight that wouldn't be seen in Western Europe for another 1500 years.
20:31Knights in shining armour.
20:35The Parthian cavalry charged, smashing through the Roman legions that were totally unequipped for such an attack.
20:42Then the cavalry pulled back and the Parthian horse archers took over.
20:50And now Crassus was in for another surprise.
20:53The Parthians used high-tech double-recurved bows.
20:58Their power was far superior to the Roman bow.
21:02They could punch right through the Roman armour.
21:07The Roman infantry were literally nailed to the ground by the onslaught.
21:16In a final act of desperation, Crassus ordered a last-ditch charge into the ranks of the Parthian archers.
21:24Amazingly, the Parthians turned and fled.
21:34As the Parthian horse archers beat a retreat, the Romans scented victory.
21:39After all, finishing off an army in retreat was something the Romans knew all about.
21:42But now, as they charged after the fleeing Parthians, they learned a lesson they would remember for the rest of
21:48their lives.
21:49Which, as it happens, wouldn't be very long.
21:54Something the Romans had never encountered before happened.
21:59The Parthian horse archers suddenly twisted in their saddles and fired off a withering volley of arrows as they retreated.
22:09It just wasn't fair. Nobody did that.
22:18Crassus' legions were cut dead in their tracks.
22:21The Parthian shot would become famous in its own right.
22:25An apparent retreat that was actually a deadly lieu.
22:40Only 500 Romans returned from the Battle of Haran.
22:44Over 30,000 of them were killed on the battlefield.
22:47And the remainder lived out the rest of their lives as slaves in Central Asia.
22:56As for our friend Crassus, it was said the Parthians gave him all the gold he wanted.
23:02They executed him by pouring molten gold down his throat.
23:12Rome had always prided herself on her military superiority over the Barbarians.
23:17But in the deserts of Mesopotamia, she'd finally met her match.
23:36So, just who were these Parthians?
23:40Hardly anything remains to tell us what their world looked like 2,000 years ago.
23:45But in Tirad's National Museum, it's still possible to stand face to face with a survivor of Serena's mighty army.
24:00This is what a Parthian warrior would have looked like.
24:02He's now allowed to wear the headband, necklace and, of course, the belt that shows he's completed his seven years'
24:09physical training.
24:10And, of course, he's wearing the moustachios of the Parthian warrior.
24:14He's a formidable figure.
24:16But, of course, this is him just dressed for a night on the town.
24:19If he was going into battle, he'd be in full armour and he'd be riding a horse that was fully
24:24armoured too.
24:24The Parthians claimed that one Parthian soldier could defeat three Roman soldiers.
24:31But the real secret of the Parthians' success over the Romans was that they were fighting for different reasons.
24:39Roman armies were hired professionals fighting for a regular wage.
24:45Persian warriors, on the other hand, were feudal knights who held their property in return for military service to their
24:52king.
24:53Just like the knights of medieval Europe, they lived by a code of honour that we might understand, but the
25:00Romans couldn't.
25:02Chivalry.
25:15And tucked away in the back streets of Tehran, you can still get a glimpse of that code.
25:21This place is called the Zuhane.
25:32And, no, these guys are not the cabaret.
25:35They're actually practising an ancient martial code that dates back to Parthian times.
25:45Zuhane means house of strength.
25:48And it may look as though they're dancing, but they're actually undergoing a ferocious regime of physical fitness.
26:01The director of the Zuhane Federation explained to me some of the meaning and purpose of these ancient exercises.
26:11On the physical level, the purpose of all these movements was to train the muscles in order to prepare them
26:18for climbing mountains,
26:20walking through deserts, or escaping from enemy captivity.
26:31The verses you can hear come from the poetry of the ancient Persians, and they help to inspire patriotism in
26:39the warrior.
26:39Can you tell me about some of the individual exercises they're doing?
26:46The exercises you are watching prepared them for wielding various types of weapons,
26:51like clubs and swords on the battlefield.
26:56But our warriors are also preparing mentally and spiritually to master their own inner failings.
27:03That way they can fight against the evil aspects, not just against the enemy, but within themselves.
27:12These are values that can be traced back to the culture of the Parthian knights,
27:18in which mental and spiritual training went hand in hand with physical prowess.
27:24Just like medieval knights, they prepared themselves to do immense damage to other people,
27:30while believing that they were perfect gentlemen.
27:38No wonder Crassus and his legions had come so unstuck, they'd stumbled into an entirely different moral universe.
28:02So, unlike the Romans, these barbarians hadn't invented their empire out of nothing,
28:12it had evolved from a long tradition that was immensely sophisticated.
28:21This is the city of Persepolis in southwest Iran.
28:25It was the symbolic heart of the first great Persian empire,
28:30and even after the dynasty that built this was forgotten, the ideas at its heart lived on.
28:43These ruins are a testament to a civilisation that was not only older than Rome, but in many ways surpassed
28:50it.
28:50The construction of Persepolis was begun by Darius the Great in the 6th century BC,
28:57at a time when Rome was just an insignificant hill town in the cultural backwater of Italy.
29:08It's pretty impressive today, but in Darius' time, this place must have been gobsmacked.
29:24Here's how the emperor Darius liked to portray himself slaying a lion.
29:28Well, you would, wouldn't you, if you were a power-mad tyrant.
29:32But wait a minute, there's actually good evidence to suggest Darius and his fellow Persian emperors
29:38weren't like that at all.
29:40In fact, the way they ruled their empire was so different from the way the Romans ruled theirs,
29:45that the Romans just couldn't understand.
29:57You can tell quite a lot from the monuments rulers decide to erect,
30:01and in Rome, the message is loud and clear.
30:04Fear us!
30:08Everywhere we see subjugated people bowing down in chains before their Roman captors,
30:13or cowed beneath the might of a Roman sword.
30:21But here in Persepolis, we see a very different image of imperial power.
30:28The Persian kings chose to show the diversity of the empire they ruled over.
30:37Here come the Afghans with a camel.
30:42Ionians offering honeycombs and linen.
30:48Scythians with stockings.
30:55And Babylonians with a humpback bull.
30:58But note that all these peoples are being led by the hand, not in chains.
31:04They come as friends, each dressed in their own national costumes,
31:09paying homage to an emperor who celebrated cultural difference and diversity within his empire.
31:19They come as a man, not in chains.
31:20These carvings would have made absolutely no sense to the Romans.
31:23For the Romans, you either learned to look like, dress like, and be like them,
31:28or you were a barbarian.
31:31That Persian tradition of public welfare and tolerance
31:34was to be fused with the traditions of another great barbarian civilisation,
31:40the Greeks.
31:43In 330 BC, Alexander the Great invaded and personally burnt Persepolis.
31:49But in a strange way, his legacy was not all bad.
31:56Alexander, of course, was too busy conquering the world to stick around.
32:00But one of his generals founded the next Persian dynasty.
32:03And now, Greek colonies formed within the Persian world, and the two cultures intermingled.
32:18And those other barbarians, the Parthians, inherited this mix of Greek and Persian ideas.
32:32These were the people who would humiliate Crassus and his legions at the Battle of Haran in 53 BC.
32:39They would rule Persia for 400 years.
32:45The Parthians weren't putty cats. They meant business, all right, but at the same time,
32:49they weren't mindless destroyers. And, worst of all, as far as Rome was concerned,
32:54they produced thinkers, intellectuals and scientists who could knock spots off the Romans.
33:07The Parthians were also great builders. Although no actual Parthian structures have survived intact,
33:13we know that they developed styles of building techniques that influence Islamic architecture even today.
33:26These elegant domes are based on Parthian technology.
33:30The Parthians used a unique quick-drying cement, a sort of superglue for bricks and stone,
33:36that was quite unknown to the Romans.
33:38You could say the Parthians created the look and feel of Central Asia.
33:49Education was at the heart of Parthian civilisation.
33:53The children of the nobility of both sexes attended schools from the age of five until they were 15.
34:01Pupils learned to memorise great chunks of classic literature.
34:07Reading from the classic poets remains a popular tradition to this day.
34:11In this case, here at the tomb of the great 12th century poet Hafez,
34:16still a big draw for young Iranians with a romantic bent.
34:28Here in Persia, Rome had run into an entirely new kind of barbarian.
34:33If anything, they were too civilised for Roman tastes.
34:37Young Parthian men studied the martial arts, of course,
34:40but they also studied music, astronomy and chess, flowers, women and wine.
34:50As far as Rome knew anything about them, the Parthians were decadent, effete barbarians
34:56who shouldn't have been able to fight the toffee.
34:59It must have been maddening for the Romans that they couldn't just wipe them out.
35:07But it didn't stop them trying.
35:11Rome's defeat at the Battle of Haran back in 53 BC had started a historic struggle between Rome and Persia.
35:23And constant war so destabilised the Parthian civilisation that in 200 AD their rule crumbled
35:31beneath the hooves of a new, more brutal Persian dynasty.
35:36The Sassanus.
35:39One emperor alone, Shapur, would defeat no less than three Roman emperors.
35:49This place was once a city of 50,000 people.
35:54And there's an awful lot of Roman stuff around here.
35:58Roman arches, Roman mosaics.
36:01It's built on a Roman gridiron pattern.
36:04And you won't find any of your fancy Parthian domes here, thank you very much.
36:09No, these ruins bear all the hallmarks of classic Roman design.
36:17So what the hell's it doing here, in the middle of Iran?
36:29This is the palace of Bishopur.
36:32It was built in the third century AD by the greatest of the Sassanid emperors, Shapur.
36:38And it looks Roman because, well, it was built by Romans.
36:42They were prisons of war undergoing forced labour.
36:46But it's also a prison.
36:48A prison for another emperor, the Roman emperor.
36:53Valerian.
36:57Here in Persia, Valerian would become the only Roman emperor in history
37:02to be taken alive in battle.
37:07The Romans had provoked a reaction in Persia that produced a state even more centralised,
37:13better organised and less tolerant than the Romans themselves.
37:28In Sassanid Persia, the days of cultural diversity were over.
37:33One ruler, one ruler, one religion, one iron fist.
37:41Instead of Parthian feudal retainers fighting out of allegiance to a great lord,
37:46the Sassanian warriors were now members of a standing army, just like Roman soldiers.
37:53Professionals paid a regular wage.
37:56They combined Roman discipline and organisation with the physical power of the Persians.
38:03And Shapur proudly carved his triumphs into the rock.
38:08If you're a Roman emperor, prepare to stop your ears now.
38:12Emperor Gordian, 244 A.D.
38:17Emperor Gordian raised an army and marched against us.
38:20Gordian was destroyed and the Roman army was annihilated.
38:24Emperor Philip, 249 A.D.
38:29The Romans proclaimed Philip Caesar.
38:31He came to sue for peace and he lied.
38:35We obliterated him.
38:37And last but not least, Valerian.
38:41Valerian came upon us with a force of 70,000 men
38:44and we took him prisoner with our own hands.
38:50It was said in Rome that Valerian was forced to kneel
38:55so the emperor Shapur could use him as a mounting block for his horse.
39:01And just to make sure Valerian felt really at home,
39:04they presented him with a sort of photo album carved in the rock near his prison.
39:09The story of how the great Shapur humiliated not one, not two, but three Roman emperors.
39:16Ah, happy memories.
39:21Shapur wanted to make quite sure that by the time Valerian had finished up his humble pie,
39:26he felt duly stuffed and so that's what he did to him.
39:30When Valerian died, Shapur had him literally stuffed and put on display.
39:40After Valerian, even Rome had to recognise that in Persia it had met its match.
39:51The loose rule of the Parthians had been usurped by the Sassanites,
39:56an empire more like Rome's.
39:58Subject people were no longer allowed to be different, they were Persianised.
40:03The Sassanian emperors claimed that the world was divided into Persian and non-Persian,
40:08just like the Romans divided into Roman and Barbarian.
40:11The state was centralised and religious tolerance became a failure to pass.
40:19Rome had created a monster in its own image.
40:28The Romans found the sophisticated Persians too tough to crack.
40:32But there were others who were easier to beat up on.
40:36For example, the Greeks.
40:39The Greeks were easier meat because they lived in fiercely independent city-states.
40:44The Romans could pick them off one by one.
40:57Many of these city-states were famous centres of learning.
41:01One of the most important was this place, Rome's.
41:07If we'd have been entering this harbour in the 3rd century BC,
41:11we'd have been able to see one of the wonders of the ancient world,
41:15the Colossus of Rhodes.
41:22The Colossus didn't actually straddle the harbour, and that's a later fantasy,
41:26but it did stand 110 feet high, a stone and iron structure coated in bronze sheeting.
41:33And it was the inspiration for this Statue of Liberty.
41:37The Colossus was dedicated to the sun.
41:40To you, O sun, the people of Rhodes set up this bronze statue.
41:45And the sun worship goes on.
41:50The Colossus, of course, was really a showpiece.
41:54It demonstrated to visitors, even before they'd set foot on the island,
41:58just what the artists, scientists and engineers of Rhodes were capable of.
42:06The merchants and seamen of Rhodes dominated maritime commerce in the eastern Mediterranean.
42:15Rhodes was an international hub, a place where many different cultures rubbed shoulders on an equal footing.
42:23It was also home to some of the greatest artists of antiquity.
42:31The sculptor who built the Colossus of Rhodes, a chap by the name of Carres, came from here.
42:41The famous mathematician and engineer, Philo of Byzantium, came to Rhodes for every schoolboy's
42:48dream project, to study catapults.
42:52By some sort of miracle, we still have his collection of texts, known as the mechanical collection,
42:58in which he describes things like self-propelled wheels, the chain pump, the air pump, a piston,
43:07a steam-powered siren for lighthouses, a machine gun, even a steam engine.
43:16I'm sure you'll be as appalled as I was to learn that the inventor of trigonometry,
43:22a chap by the name of Hay Parkers, did a lot of his stuff here.
43:36Ancient Greece had been a world of metal gear trains, pistons and advanced engineering,
43:41but that wasn't the sort of thing that interested Romans. Rome had other uses for this island.
43:48Rhodes became a holiday finishing school for young Romans who wanted to get into politics,
43:53and made its money teaching the art of public speaking.
43:57All the most ambitious Romans came here. Cicero, Caesar, Pompey, Cassius. Cassius. Bad luck, Rhodes.
44:09Cassius was one of the conspirators who assassinated Caesar in 44 BC. A job well done, he made his play
44:15for political power, which meant he needed money, quick. So, where to plunder? Cassius had studied
44:22rhetoric at Rhodes, and what he actually learnt was that it was rich and helpless.
44:27When Shakespeare said,
44:29Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look, he was understating. Cassius was voracious.
44:43In 42 BC, he simply walked in and took everything he could carry, including thousands of artistic treasures.
44:53Rhodes was stripped bare and would never recover.
44:57And it wasn't just Rhodes. The whole Greek world of learning sank into oblivion.
45:09Which brings us back to that strange piece of machinery that was pulled out of the sea.
45:19When that Greek sponge diver came across the sunken Roman ship in 1900, no one could have realized that he
45:26would
45:26reconnect us with the lost world of Greek science. Everyone was more excited by the more obvious treasures.
45:37And this rather nondescript lump of metal was completely ignored for half a century. And it's taken another 50 years
45:44to figure out its staggering complexity.
45:49I spoke to a man who's been obsessed with it for 20 years.
45:53The divers who found the wreck, the first thing they noticed were lots of statues. So, naturally,
45:58the divers picked up anything that looked the color of corroded bronze. And they came across this slump.
46:04But it didn't look like anything much. And it got taken back to the museum in Athens.
46:09Where this, because it didn't obviously fit anything, was simply one of many loose pieces lying around.
46:16It wasn't until much, much later that someone had the idea of taking x-rays of this thing.
46:28So, what was it?
46:34It was clockwork. But they didn't have clockwork in a classical antiquity, did they?
46:43So, what was it?
46:46Michael Wright's reconstruction has helped to completely transform our understanding of the barbarian Greek world.
46:57So, here we have it. The Antikythera Mechanism reconstructed.
47:02Yes.
47:03Oh, wow. So, now, what am I... What is this object?
47:07This is a planetarium in a box.
47:08It's a complex piece of mechanism.
47:10It's hugely complicated and hugely more complicated than anyone had guessed.
47:14And you just... And there's no evidence of things like this before from that period of time.
47:19It's the first such thing that's ever been found.
47:21It's the only thing like this that's ever been found.
47:24There are a few clues in the literature.
47:26But people had thought, because they were just words,
47:29people had imagined that you could write these off as literary fantasy.
47:33What exactly is the thing for, then?
47:35You can dial in any date you like, forward or back in time, by turning the knob.
47:41Yeah.
47:41And it will show you where you'd expect to find the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
47:50moon, in the zodiac. And this central display shows the phase of the moon.
47:55Is it the phase of the moon?
47:57Oh, right.
47:57First quarter, full moon, last quarter, and back to new moon.
48:04And meanwhile, all the planets are all moving.
48:06Everything's moved forward.
48:08It's an extraordinary piece.
48:09I mean, you just wouldn't expect something so complex and so modern-looking in the ancient world.
48:17That's important.
48:19What would this be used for?
48:21You could use it for casting horoscopes.
48:23People were getting interested in the idea of the personal horoscope at this time,
48:27first century BC, in the Greek and Roman world.
48:30And you could see where that was born and where all the planets were
48:34and even what phase the moon was.
48:36If you wanted to know, yes.
48:38People were much more aware of the sky in the ancient world than we are today.
48:42This must have seemed like a magic box of tricks to people.
48:45I dare say.
48:47Everyone would have wanted one.
48:48Yeah, of course they would.
48:49I mean, look, the Romans ruled the world,
48:51but the chap who made this could sell them the universe in a box.
48:59Professor Wright's work has helped to show that it wasn't the Romans who were the clever ones in the ancient
49:05world.
49:05It was the barbarians.
49:10All the Romans could do was steal their gadgets and ship them back to Rome to admire as novelties,
49:15without ever really understanding them.
49:21Astronomy, mathematics, scientific speculation.
49:24These are all the province of the barbarian worlds,
49:28of the Persians, the Indians, the Greeks.
49:37Time, space, the heavens and mathematics
49:40were all fused together in this extraordinary piece of machinery.
49:47The Antikythera mechanism proves that the ancient Greeks
49:50were intellectually light years ahead of the Romans.
49:53One of their astronomers even came up with the proposition
49:56that the earth might revolve around the sun rather than the other way around,
50:00but nobody could get their heads around that one.
50:03I suppose they might have done
50:04if the Greek centres of learning had kept going in places like this,
50:08but they didn't.
50:10What happened?
50:12Rome happened.
50:14Can you name one famous Roman mathematician?
50:19No?
50:20Well, that's because there weren't any.
50:23The Romans didn't want new inventions and discoveries.
50:27New ideas were a threat to the system.
50:33I was brought up to believe that the Romans
50:35were the great innovators of the ancient world,
50:38that they brought civilisation and progress
50:40to the dark world of the barbarians.
50:43But it doesn't seem to have been like that at all.
50:46In their paranoid grab for world domination,
50:50Rome crushed and destroyed other cultures,
50:54and in destroying them,
50:56it destroyed knowledge.
50:59And in destroying them, it destroyed knowledge.
51:40Thanks, Mark.
51:50Thanks, Mark.
51:53I'm P60.
51:53Bye.
51:53Bye.
51:54You
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